


Children of the Sun

by sanidine



Series: See America Right [2]
Category: WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Ableist Language, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Consent Issues, Hitchhiking, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Survival Sex, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, Miscommunication, Referenced Breathplay, Sexist Language, Sugar Beet Harvest, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 10:37:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8442544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanidine/pseuds/sanidine
Summary: What does Dean Ambrose have, in this life? Truck stops and cheap booze and sugar beets and the open road(A sadder, less porny sequel to Whiteout Conditions)





	

Dean hitched a ride from Tulsa to Little Rock with an old military guy who blasted Iron Maiden and told Dean - repeatedly, and in detail - about how he had lost the three fingers on his left hand due to a staph infection that he had picked up while he was stationed in Korea. The guy dropped him off at an interstate exit with a salute once they made it to Little Rock, and Dean asked at the nearest gas station to find out how to get to the truck stop that Seth said that he was going to be at for the night.  
  
Turned out, he was nowhere close. Well. It was on the same side of the city, at least, but it was far enough that Dean knew he wouldn't have to worry about showing up early and having to kill time while he waited for Seth. Oh well. If Dean had minded walking he never would've gotten into the hobo business in the first place.  
  
It was only early fall but there was an unseasonable cold snap in the air, the first unwelcome sign of winter. Not that it ever really got that cold in Arkansas, but still. The sunset was all sorts of vicious reds, and Dean had enough money in his pocket from panhandling that he figured he had better find something to keep him warm. Time and the miles passed easily enough after that.  
  
Dean only stumbled a little bit when he made it to the truck stop, whistled as he wandered through the rows of semi trucks until he tracked down Seth’s familiar black and grey rig.  
  
The first thing Dean thought was that Seth looked tired. Bags under his eyes like he'd been driving too long, a little smaller than the last time he had given Dean a ride, but he seemed almost excited when Dean clambered up and knocked on the passenger side window. That hesitant happiness faded fast once Dean was actually in the truck with him.  
  
“Night Train?” Seth’s lip curled “Really?”  
  
“Well hello to you too.” Dean slammed the door with his free hand, grinning and feeling good as he slung his backpack into the footwell. “And it’s Night Train _Express_ , actually. Get it right.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to drink in a running vehicle.”  
  
Dean was pretty sure that was a lie. Most of the truckers who he hitched with didn't have a problem having having a few back in the sleeper after they had parked for the night, but what the fuck ever. It was Seth's truck, Dean wasn't going to fight him on it.  
  
“Fine, pretty.” Dean finished the bottle off in a couple long swallows. He let it drop and roll into the sleeper behind him, good mood gone as he sneered at Seth’s look of annoyance “I was done anyways.”  
  
Seth didn't say anything else even though he still looked pissed, left Dean alone in the cab when he went into the truck stop. Which maybe wasn’t the best idea, but Dean somehow resisted the overwhelming urge to dig through all of Seth's drawers and cabinets, restrained himself to the one that he knew he was allowed to get into - after the first couple of times that he had fucked around with Seth, Dean had pretty much memorized it.  
  
Dean opened the drawer next to the bunk and shifted the packs of gum and earbuds and loose receipts that were obscuring Seth’s hidden bottle of lube. While he was snooping Dean caught sight of the box of condoms in there too, seemingly untouched since they had last met up months ago. Either Seth had been letting all the other pretty hitchhikers hit it raw or he had only been keeping his own self company.  
  
Seth finally returned after he had finished doing his hair or whatever the fuck took that long. Dean had the passenger side door open and one foot out of it before Seth had a chance to speak up and ask  
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
“Gotta take a piss. If that’s okay with you, princess. ”  
  
None of this was going how Dean had imagined when Seth had called Dean’s crappy little burner phone to let him know that he was swinging through Arkansas. But now that Dean was neck deep in it he wasn’t willing to back down.  
  
Instead of snapping at him like he had expected, Seth just disappeared back into the sleeper and pulled the curtain behind him to shut Dean out. Fine. Whatever. Dean wasn’t sure when Seth had turned into a whiny bitch, but he was clearly going to have to deal with it if he didn’t want to have to try and catch another ride or sleep rough for the night. He could have, though. Seth was a sure thing, but it wasn’t like Dean was trapped in a blizzard this time. He could just fucking walk away and not come back.  
  
Out in the cool fall air again and his head felt a little clearer and Dean kicked at the loose gravel scattered across the parking lot, Why was he trying to pick fights with Seth all of a sudden? Sure, he had been drinking for hours. The booze didn’t help. But it wasn’t like he was even that drunk.  
  
Seth hadn’t locked him out by the time that Dean got back to the truck so he climbed back in, closing the door heavily behind him. There was a fleece blanket folded up on the passenger set that hadn’t been there before. Fuck that.  
  
Dean could tell that Seth wasn’t asleep when he pulled the curtain back. Seth was decent enough at faking it, but Dean knew right away that he was bullshitting because Seth was curled up on top of his covers and he hadn’t taken his knee brace off yet. Dean thought about saying something shitty at first, but he looked at the curl of Seth’s shoulders through the thin material of his shirt and decided against it.  
  
“Dude. It’s not even ten o’clock yet. I know you’re not sleeping.”  
  
“Got to get an early start tomorrow” Seth said. His voice was muffled where his face was still pressed against the pillow, but he rolled over without complaint when Dean laid down on the bed next to him.  
  
“Fine, but I wanna watch Die Hard.” Dean nudged him with an elbow.  “Where’s your stupid tablet thing?”  
  
Seth gave up pretending to be tired as he sat up next to Dean and rested the tablet on his lap, plugging it in to charge and tilting it so that Dean could see it better. Dean figured that was as close to an apology as either of them was going to get.  
  
Seth had proven before that he was allergic to making any kind of first move. Dean, not feeling particularly charitable that night, decided to let Seth sweat and squirm with anticipation for a little bit.  
  
Dean didn’t really give a fuck about watching Die Hard. Bruce Willis was great, sure, but Dean was mostly focused on Seth’s nervous breathing, the way that they were pressed together from shoulder to knee. It was warm enough in the truck that Dean could relax, nice and buzzy from the alcohol. Dean could see enough of Seth in his peripheral vision that he could look his fill without making it totally obvious that he was just checking Seth out and not paying attention to the movie that he had insisted on watching.  
  
It was an effort, but Dean made himself wait until the terrorists shot the Japanese guy before he reached over and put his hand on Seth’s leg right above the brace. Seth made a low, choked off noise and Dean’s hand crept up his thigh, traced his fingers under the leg of Seth’s shorts and along the soft skin there just to hear him whimper.  
  
Dean rolled over on top of Seth to pin him down and Seth tasted like toothpaste when Dean kissed him, a harsh counterpoint to the rubbing alcohol and grape kool aid flavor that was still clinging to Dean’s own mouth. Fuckin’ Night Train. Why did he ever think that shit was a good idea?  
  
It was a little gross, sure, but Dean wasn't that bothered by it. So he wasn't expecting it when Seth suddenly pushed him away which a firm shove to the chest.  
  
“Knock it off.” Seth said, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth without looking at Dean  
  
“What.” Dean sat back, confused, head spinning a little bit. His inflection was way off, too flat to be a question, which. Maybe that was a good thing, since Dean didn’t really know what he was asking.  
  
“You're drunk.” Seth had pushed himself up, swung so his legs were hanging off the edge of the bunk.  
  
“Not that drunk. See?” Dean grabbed at himself, lewd, but Seth didn't smile. Dean swung around so he was sitting next to Seth, close but not touching. “The fuck’s your problem all of a sudden?”  
  
“Geez, I don’t know.” Seth shook his head. “Maybe it makes me feel like a piece of shit that you have to tie one on to want to fuck me.”  
  
“What the fuck, Seth. Screw you.”  
  
Seth grimaced, his mouth set in a tight line. “Yeah. That's the problem isn't it.”  
  
“What are you, the fuckin’ morality police?” All of Dean’s anger from earlier rushed back, destroyed his good mood. And he wasn’t drunk enough that he wasn't thinking. Dean was thinking just fine. He was certainly clear headed enough to know that he needed to grab his shoes and his backpack before he left, even if he struggled with the laces for a second.  
  
“You don’t. You don't have to -” Seth reached out, halting, which made it easy for Dean to dodge his hand as he headed for the door.  
  
“Fuck it. I'm done with this shit.” Dean said, his heart pounding furiously as he grabbed the door handle. “Don't worry. I can just find another ride. One with someone who doesn't care that I'm drunk if I wanna suck dick.”  
  
As far as parting words went, it wasn't particularly smooth. But it also wasn't a lie.  
  
Dean was heading north before the sun rose.  
  
\---  
  
Thanks to a free haircut from the shelter in Lincoln, Nebraska a week later, Dean actually looked decent enough to hit the pavement and make some money scamming receipts. Big chain hardware stores were a sweet spot for that type of thing as long as Dean didn't dawdle or do anything too stupid that would call attention to himself. But then he had walked past the guy in the plumbing department and, well. Dean couldn’t help his curiosity.  
  
The guy looked sort of like what Dean was used to seeing when he looked in the mirror - tired and strung out, like he had been on the road for a long time. Dean knew a kindred spirit when he saw one. When Dean had come up beside him, the guy had been standing back and staring up at the baskets of pipe fittings, swaying back and forth a little and humming under his breath. A rolling, toneless drone.  
  
He had that wide eyed, blasted look about him that Dean had seen plenty of times before. It usually meant that Dean could talk someone into sharing their drugs with a minimal amount of effort.  
  
“Lookin’ for something?”  
  
“ Al- ways.”  
  
The guy hadn’t startled at all, just slowly turned his head to look at Dean. His pupils were blown so wide that Dean could see only the slightest sliver of color around the edges.  
  
“Cool.” Dean said, and he didn’t take a step back even though he kind of wanted to. “What’s your name, man?”  
  
“Stardust.” He said, hissing a little bit on the s’s and the t’s. Dean blinked. That was different.  
  
Stardust’s eyes darted up to the crisscrossing pipes high above in the ceiling of the store, like he could see something up there other than the air ducts and the hanging fluorescent lights. “I am on a mission. A mission to abate the flood, to seal the cracks in the fireball so that we may all continue on our great cosmic journey.”  
  
That was nothing but nonsense to Dean, but it wasn’t like he had so many other important things to do with his day that he couldn’t take a break to help some dude who was tripping balls in the middle of Lowe’s.  
  
Things started to make a lot more sense about thirty minutes later when Dean was out in the parking lot, shimmying out from under a travel trailer with a roll of electrical tape clamped in his teeth. The camper and the truck that was hauling it were both dusty and weathered, sporting Texas license plates and a bunch of bumper stickers proclaiming that the end times were coming and that 9-11 had been an inside job. Pretty standard for people from Texas.  
  
“Are you sure it’s fixed?”  
  
Stardust had introduced Dean to his two friends, but Dean had already forgotten which one of them was Konnor and which was Viktor. He just knew for sure that they were both spelled with the letter ‘k’, because these guys had seen fit to tell him that no less than fifty times already.  
  
This was the tall one with the mohawk - Konnor, maybe. The other guy had taken Stardust back inside to return the handful of stainless steel pipe brackets that Stardust had somehow thought were necessary for repairing the grey-water system on the 23’ Fireball camper.  
  
“Good enough.” Dean shrugged, tossed him the roll of spitty tape. The guy made no effort to catch it, so it bounced off the his chest and fell to the asphalt.  “Should stop it from dripping all over the ground at least.”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
Dean stretched the kinks out of his neck while the guy just stood there with his arms crossed, staring at him. Across the mostly empty parking lot Dean could see Stardust and the shorter guy come out of the sliding doors at the front of the store.  
  
It was late fall, cool enough that they were all wearing long sleeves, but Dean had seen the heavy black tattoos on the back of Konnor and Viktor’s hands, on the sides of their necks before the twisting lines disappeared under their shirt collars. This one, who Dean was almost certain was Konnor, had a bold pyramid topped by an all-seeing eye on the back of his hand that rippled when the tendons there flexed.  
  
“So is that his real name?” Dean asked, breaking the lull in conversation  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Stardust.”  
  
“No. His government name is Cody, but he doesn’t like people calling him that.” Konnor was staring him down like it was a challenge.  
  
Dean raised his hands, placating.  
  
“Nah, man, it’s cool. I’d just wondered if his parents were big hippies like mine.” That was a lie. Dean’s parents had been nothing of the sort, but Dean had found over time that dropping bits of personal information could help ingratiate him with strangers. And it wasn't like he was going to be telling random assholes all his secrets, so. “Grew up off the grid, that’s why I know how to fix trailers and stuff.”  
  
More lies. Dean knew nothing about it besides the general concept that he could stop a leaking pipe for a little while by wrapping it in a couple layers of tape. But that was apparently more than these guys could figure out, and Dean sensed an in.  
  
Sure enough Konnor relaxed and raised his eyebrows approvingly. “So you haven’t been microchipped?”  
  
“Um.” That, however, was not at all what Dean had been expecting. “No?”  
  
Viktor and Stardust had made their way back over to the trailer by that point. Dean didn’t understand most of the conversation that followed. Between Konnor and Viktor with their word salad of conspiracy bullshit, and Stardust’s bizarre ramblings, it took Dean much longer than it should have to figure out what was being discussed. That they were headed up to North Dakota for the sugar beet harvest, and that they were inviting him along.  
  
Dean never got his shit together in time to work the sugar beet harvest. He had heard that the money was good and the sugar companies were willing to employ anyone two hands and a pulse, but he would have had to get on a computer and fill out an application in May for a job that didn’t start until October, which. Fuck that. Dean told them as much.  
  
“Each year a bunch of people flake out and they end up short handed.” Viktor said. “Stardust went to highschool with the kid of one of the head honchos. He can hook you up.”  
  
Dean had some real sincere doubts about that, but he also felt good about his chances. Intuition had steered Dean wrong before, but this didn't feel like one of those times. Then again, they never did. But Dean agreed anyway.  
  
Part of him still balked at the idea of traveling with three guys who were all about his size and obviously, um. Eccentric would have been putting it nicely. But he had gone out on shakier limbs for shittier opportunities that hadn’t ended up working out, and besides, what did he have to lose? At least if the whole sugar beet thing fell through he would be closer to the Twin Cities - Dean knew a handful of people there who he hadn’t seen in a while, who would probably let him sleep on their floors for a couple of days each.  
  
Once they got their shit together and got back on the road they drove straight through. Dean spent nine hours scrunched up in the backseat of the truck cab with Stardust while Konnor and Viktor took turns behind the wheel.  
  
Dean learned through bits of conversations that the truck and the travel trailer actually belonged to Stardust, but it didn't take much to figure out why the other two handled all the driving. Stardust got distracted every time they drove past a wind farm, eyes wide and his head craned back to watch the enormous spinning blades. He spent a lot of time waving his hands around and talking about how they were all just motes in the eye of God before he passed out against Dean’s shoulder and started snoring.  
  
Dean really had to wonder how these three were connected. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Konnor and Viktor to rip off Stardust. To steal his stuff and dump him in the middle of nowhere. To leave him to die in the desert. Those two were rough guys, Dean could tell. But he also remembered Konnor getting defensive when he thought Dean might upset ‘Stardust’ by calling him by his real name. Dean didn’t know what to make of it.  
  
Maybe the three of them had some type of nutjob symbiosis going on. Stardust, who had clearly taken enough psychedelics to fuck his shit up on a permanent basis, and Konnor and Viktor, who seemed physically incapable of shutting the fuck up about the illuminati for more than five minutes at a time.  
  
There were plenty of guys out there who were worried about government conspiracies and aliens beaming control rays into their brains. But Dean had never met two people who were as excited about the prospect as Konnor and Viktor.  
  
“The problem with chemtrails” Viktor started, as they slowed down for construction somewhere in South Dakota “is that there aren't enough of them.”  
  
\---  
  
Despite Dean’s doubts, once they had made it to beet harvest headquarters he got hired on right away. He didn’t even have to try and pass a piss test, which was fortunate. Bit of a Catch 22 for the beet harvesters though. If they hired people like Dean then it was no wonder flaky assholes left them strapped for employees at the last minute.  
  
“Training starts tomorrow. The company will supply you with all your safety gear,” said Ted, face blank as he stuffed Dean’s messy paperwork into a file. Ted was the guy who seemed to know Stardust but he hadn’t exactly looked excited to see them show up. “You’ll be responsible for your own gloves and boots.”  
  
"Um…”  
  
Ted sighed, scrubbed his hand through his short hair. He didn’t look happy about it, but he ended up leading Dean to a room with a bunch of gear left over from previous years.  
  
The only boots he could find were blown out in the backs and about a half size too big for him, but they were free, so. Whatever. Dean also scored a few long sleeved shirts and a pair of insulated overalls which he thought evened it out good enough.  
  
There was enough daylight left to check in at the company campground and get everything set up. The host glared at their trailer, following them to their spot and watching through squinted eyes as Konnor and Viktor got it lined out and leveled. Dean was the one who got stuck reassuring her that everything worked and nothing was going to leak out all over the precious soil of the great state of North Dakota.  
  
He somehow managed to restrain himself from saying that he had fixed it himself, knowing that wouldn’t have gone over well at all. That was the deal though. Since Dean had proclaimed himself to be a trailer expert, Stardust was letting him stay in the Fireball under the condition that he kept it in good enough shape that they didn't all get kicked out of the campground    
  
They didn’t have to report for training until 7pm the next day, and Stardust said that it would be best to stay up all night and sleep through the next day so that they could get their sleep patterns on track. Actually, what Stardust had said was something about falling in line with the orbit if the earth, but Dean was already getting pretty good at interpreting that shit.  
  
At 23’ long the travel trailer had a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen with a table, and a couch. It would have been a sweet setup for one, maybe two people who really liked each other. But with all four of them it was cramped, to say the least. There was a lot of wood paneling, faded and cracked by heat and age, and it was real dusty in the camper but it was more like fine grains of sand than the grey stuff that accumulated in houses.Working together they got all of the windows covered up with cardboard and duct tape, shook the dust out of the sheets that had been piled haphazardly on the mattress in the bedroom. It was dark by then, which meant that it was Konnor and Viktor and Dean doing most of the work while Stardust paced back and forth outside and looked up and the stars in the sky.  
  
By the time that the pink dawn was starting to light up the horizon they had all gone more than a day without any sleep and Dean was starting to feel a little brittle with it, tight around the eyes. It was close enough quarters that it was obvious when Dean lingered in the doorway, not sure where he was supposed to be sleeping, when Konnor and Viktor skinned their shirts off over their heads, and.  
  
Dean had noticed the tattoos before. Sort of. They both had them on the back of their hands and Viktor had one on the side of his neck. Dean had assumed that there had to be others, but even expecting it was different than actually seeing the thick black lines that covered both of their torsos. The tattoos were well done, more professional than anything on Dean’s skin, which was a bit shocking considering that the subject matter was, well, fucking off the wall crazy. Eyes and pyramids and inverted crosses, an owl that was wreathed in flames, something on Konnor’s back that looked like a demon with the head of a goat holding the White House in one hand while being abducted by a UFO.  
  
“Viktor doesn't share.” Stardust said, suddenly right behind Dean’s shoulder. He sounded bored, uninterested, but he was standing close enough that Dean could feel the heat radiating off his body, the breath of the words on his neck.  
  
Dean startled. “I wasn't -”  
  
“But they won't care if you wanna watch.”  
  
\---  
  
It didn’t take Dean long to figure out that the beet harvesting job blew. And not in a good way.  
  
They were on the night crew, working twelve hour shifts without scheduled time off until the harvest was done. The trucks would come in and unload the sugar beets into a machine that cleaned them off and put the dirt back in the trucks. Then the beets all got to ride up a towering conveyor belt to get put in big piles that Dean did not understand or care to learn the purpose of. Konnor and Viktor and Dean spent their nights at the gates of the piling stations, watching the trucks come through and picking up spilled beets and scraping mud off their boots and shoveling more beets onto the big beet conveyor belt.  
  
No matter how many layers of clothes he wore when he was working at night, Dean was never warm enough. Sometimes they would have to shut down for a bit if it got too wet or too cold, but Dean figured out pretty fast that those thresholds were tougher to meet than he would have thought. The cold was like a fist that squeezed around him all of the time, leeching the warmth out of Dean’s body, and the only way to really combat it was to keep moving.  Which made it a good thing that he was running his ass all over the place chasing beets for twelve hours at a time, but it also wore him the fuck out.  
  
Bitching about work and the weather was everyone's favorite hobby but Dean also knew he could get through it no problem. He just had to keep his head down and do what he was told. The operation was busy enough that once Dean got into the groove of working hard he would lose track of time, until he realized that the sky was starting to lighten from black to grey, then yellow and orange and pink as the sun rose up behind the towering piles of beets.  
  
The beets were different than Dean had imagined - not cute and red like the ones on the labels in the grocery store, but huge and grey and slimy. Some of them were small enough to sneak off the conveyor belt and fall through the small openings in the machinery. The little showers of dirt that were constantly raining down and getting under the collar of his shirt were annoying enough, but the flying beets were legitimately dangerous.  
  
Most of the time Dean worked directly beneath the big piler machines, and he learned quickly why everyone always wore their hardhats and no one ever looked up. Stardust said that the bruises on Dean’s shoulders and back looked like a deep space nebulas, but Dean had a hard time taking it as a compliment once he figured out that just meant Stardust wanted to poke at them more.  
  
Stardust was too much of a space cadet to work around the heavy equipment, so he had been assigned to a warm little office where he printed weight tickets for the incoming truck drivers. Dean would go in there and lay on the floor during his rare ten minute breaks or when the weather got so cold that they had to shut down. He would doze off while he listened to Stardust ramble on about all sorts of bizarre bullshit. When his mind was in that liminal state Dean would find himself wondering occasionally if Seth had ever hauled beets - probably not.  
  
(Dean still had the little brick of a cell phone that Seth had given him back after the first time they met, which pretty impressive given that Dean wasn't exactly a champion when it came to keeping track of things. Dean would talk to him, sometimes, but most of the time he didn't think about Seth at all. Every couple of months their paths would cross on the road. Tupelo, Dallas, Idaho Falls.  
  
The last time Dean had seen Seth before the argument in Little Rock had been in Albany, where Seth had taken Dean’s hand and wrapped it around his neck. Dean remembered the sharp line of Seth's collarbone under the edge of his palm, how Seth's pulse had fluttered when he pressed Dean's thumb against his own throat. Seth hadn’t been able to look Dean in the eye when he'd done it.)  
  
A week into the beet harvest, just when Dean was getting in the swing of things, one of the skidsteer operators lit out for warmer climates. Dean, who had been lollygagging on his ‘lunch’ break, got drafted to clean the inside of the pilers while they were shut down for nightly maintenance. It happened once every shift, but since it wasn’t Dean’s responsibility he hadn’t ever paid any attention to it.  
  
He had to climb up a ladder and crawl  into the guts of the piler, where there was no light at all save for what shone from the headlamp on Dean’s hardhat. He slithered down the long conveyor and scrape away the beet pulp and clumps of dirt that had accumulated along the walls while his hands went numb inside his gloves.  
  
Dean was all alone in there. It was dark and cold and quiet. When Dean stopped scraping he could hear, vague and far away, the noises from the other pilers that were still running. The beeping of trucks backing up. The sound of his own heart beating. It was like Dean had somehow survived getting swallowed up by some vast beast and was trapped by himself in the winding, putrid intestines of the thing.  
  
Dean fucking loved it.  
  
His supervisor didn’t seem to know what to say when he told her as much, but Dean earned himself a promotion and an extra two bucks an hour just by being a huge fucking weirdo. Now he didn’t have to worry about getting hit by the beets as much, since he was spending more time in the locked out machines. Now he was one with the beets.  
  
After a while it all just blurred together. One long and monotonous sugar beet flinging fever dream  
  
In between shifts, it didn’t take long for Dean to become personally acquainted with the thousands of ways that Stardust’s camper was a true piece of shit. There was never hot water because the pilot light wouldn’t stay lit and the microwave barely worked and there was a big soft spot in the middle of the floor that Dean always worried was going to give way underneath him. But the worst thing about it was that the furnace was permanently on the fritz. Maybe that didn't matter in Texas. But in North Dakota it was a fucking pain in the ass.  
  
Sure, it was warmer during the day when they were sleeping than when they worked at night. But that wasn’t saying much. They split off between the two beds in the camper after the first couple nights because they were four grown ass men and there was no way in hell they could have fit in the same place even though it might have been warmer that way.  
  
Dean didn’t know what Konnor and Viktor got up to out on the pullout couch, but it became routine for Dean to wake up in the middle of the afternoon when Stardust jammed his cold nose into Dean’s neck and snuck his shivering hands up under Dean’s shirts to try and get warm. Dean didn’t mind, not really. He had always run hot and Stardust was way too thin anyways but the shock of cold toes digging into the meat of his calves was still a nuisance. Dean would just sigh and nudge Stardust until he had rolled over and Dean could spoon up against him, curl in close and stop him from shaking so bad. Stardust always ran cold, as “cold as the vacuum of space”.  
  
The only good thing about being so goddamn sore and exhausted all the time was that Dean was always quick to fall back asleep. Then Dean would wake up again as the sun started to set, orange light slanting through the gaps in the cardboard that they had taped over the windows. Back to work.  
  
Just when the end of the harvest was finally in sight, the weather got so bad that the whole operation had to shut down for three days. Driving rain turned the site into a treacherous swamp, and winds so blowing hard enough that running any the pilers was impossible. Konnor told Dean that they got paid for four hours of work every day during the shutdown, which was better than nothing and calmed him down a little bit. But more than anything Dean just wanted to be done - each day that they were delayed was one more added on to the end. Dean was going to stick around until the end of the harvest no matter what but he could not wait for the day when he could fuck off out of North Dakota for at least another year.  
  
The weather was too shitty to do anything outside, and the long stretch of inactivity fucked with Dean’s sleep schedule something fierce. Unlike the nicer trailers around them, Stardust’s camper didn’t have a TV. The only books were a bunch of dog eared paperbacks belonging to Konnor and Viktor that all had titles like ‘ The World and Europe: A Hidden Agenda Behind The Hall Of Mirrors ’ and ‘ Dead Men Talking, Exposing The New World Order Conspiracy ’.  
  
Bored, Dean had fucked up the first afternoon of the shutdown and made the mistake of flipping through one of those books. It was heavily flagged with little Post-Its, and Dean had just enough time to see that all of the margins had been filled with notes before Viktor got right up in his face. He had figured that Viktor was going to chew him out for touching his stuff without permission but the reality was much worse.  
  
“We knew you would come around.” Viktor said, firm hand on Dean’s back guiding him to sit at the tiny dining room table where a bunch more of the books were laid out. Before Dean could extract himself he was trapped between Viktor and the wall of the trailer.  
  
Konnor slid into the seat across from them, carrying a stack of the tattered books. “People are starting to say that the old Europa royalty no longer has the right to rule. That their time is over.”  
  
“But listen, Dean.” Viktor, pressed up next to Dean, slung a companionable arm around his shoulders and whispered “Listen. Their time has just begun .”  
  
It turned into a conversation that lasted two hours. Two hours of Dean’s life that he would never get back. Worse yet, all the work Dean had done convincing the two of them that he firmly did not give a shit about their conspiracy theories had been completely undone in an instant.  
  
Two days into the shutdown they all drove into the nearest town and restocked on food, passed by a bunch of familiar faces from the campground as Dean filled his cart with cans of spaghettios and jars of peanut butter. Every piece of clothing they had worn that month was damp and disgusting, so they detoured to the laundromat. As they waited for the clothes to finish spinning, Dean plugged the charger for his crappy little phone into an outlet and watched as the screen lit up.  
  
Dean hadn’t realized that the phone could text, but as the screen lit up it started to buzz with a handful of missed texts from Seth. For a while, Dean just watched through the glass door of the drier as his clothes tumbled over and over and over. Then it took him a little bit to figure out what the hell he was doing, but in the end -  
  
He texted Seth back.  
  
\---  
  
Once the harvest finally finished, Konnor and Viktor and Stardust dropped Dean off in civilization, and Dean took the Greyhound bus from Grand Forks down to Fargo. He could have probably hitched a ride and saved himself some money, but it was cold as fuck in North Dakota and he wasn’t in the mood. Besides, what was the point of having a few dollars to your name if you couldn’t use them? Dean had never been good at saving what he earned - sooner or later he would lose it or spend it or have it taken it away.  
  
It was a short ride, but Dean was great at making short term friendships. He started chatting with a young couple in the row behind him, and it turned out that they had a couple bottles of cheap liquor stashed in their backpack. People weren’t supposed to drink on the bus, but since when had anybody ever followed that rule? They were more than happy to share with him once Dean regaled them with stories of his beet induced miseries, so  Dean was already a little bit slurry by the time he stepped off the bus in Fargo.  
  
There was a meandering seven mile walk from the crumbling brick bus station to the truck stop where he was supposed to meet Seth. He could have gotten there faster if he had called a cab or hiked along the road ditch on the interstate. But Dean didn’t want to get picked up by the cops and besides. It wasn’t like he was in a hurry - he had hours until the time Seth had texted that he’d be getting in. If Dean got there too early he’d just end up bumming around the parking lot. Plus it gave him some time to sober up, just in case Seth was planning to throw a fit again.  
  
Maybe Dean had gotten too used to bunking with Stardust and Konnor and Viktor. He’d had no desire to go back to Texas with the three of them - because fuck Texas - but at least it would have been warm. But Dean just wasn't used to feeling so alone when he was by himself.  
  
Seth's truck was already parked out on the edge of the lot when Dean eventually made it to the truck stop. Dean didn’t even get a chance to say hello or anything once he had settled in the front seat, much less find out if Seth was maybe still pissed at him. Because Seth was on him before he could blink, straddled Dean’s lap and picked with hood off his head so that Seth could tangle his fingers in Dean’s hair.  
  
Huh. So much for Seth never making the first move.  
  
“You really want it, huh?” Dean asked, his mouth already feeling hot and swollen. It was the world's most rhetorical question, but Seth nodded anyways. Seth kept moving his hands around to touch at Dean’s chest, his shoulder, to curl his fingers around the back of his head so that Dean had to keep kissing him. As if it were a hardship.  
  
If they would have been in a house or a motel room or anything other than the cab of a truck Dean might have stood up and carried Seth back to the bed. But what the truck lacked in room for maneuverability was made up for by the fact that nothing was more than three steps away from anything else. Dean shed his extra layers of clothes, down to just a tank top and jeans in the time it took Seth to get on the bed and unzip his pants. Seth was still in the middle of stripping his shirt off when Dean sat down on the bed stopped him so that his wrists got caught, twisted up in the fabric as Dean pressed them back against the wall of the cab.  
  
When Dean took his own hand away Seth kept his arms right where Dean had put them. His eyes had closed and he was breathing heavy, his dick already hard and leaking against the thin fabric where it was tenting against his briefs in the open V of the zipper on his jeans. Dean wasn't quite as hard, yet, but he got there fast after he shifted so that he was on top of Seth, slotted between Seth’s spread legs so that he could roll their hips together and lick up all the needy little noises that Seth made when Dean tweaked his nipple.  
  
Seth surged up against him and Dean pinned him down, one big hand flat on Seth's chest. His hand was chapped, rough and dirty where the dirt had ground in to become a permanent part of his flesh. All of his nails had been torn off down to the quick, and Dean watched the way that some of the soft hairs on Seth’s chest caught in the places where his skin was cracked around the edges of his knuckles. Dean shifted to the side then, and pulled Seth’s pants and underwear off with the hand that wasn't pressed against Seth’s beating heart. Seth moved to help the process along, planted his feet and tilted his hips up to make it easier and -  
  
Easy . That was what Dean always remembered most about Seth after they had parted ways. How quick he was to give it up, how he’d let Dean do almost anything he wanted. It was weird. Different, but not in a bad way. Dean had spent enough of his life at the mercy of others that he relished the chance to have Seth underneath him, sweet and willing.  
  
Seth watched as Dean dug around through the drawer and found the lube, and Dean thought he looked like he wanted to say something. But Seth kept his mouth shut until Dean traced wet fingers across his tight little hole, not even pushing in, just enough pressure to make Seth shiver and moan. His legs were spread so wide, one of his feet pulled up to brace his heel against Dean’s shoulder, and Dean went hot all over when he started to press the tip of one finger into Seth.  
  
“You want it?” Dean asked. It wasn’t hard to get Seth to beg once he was all worked up, so Dean knew he wouldn't be disappointed.  
  
“Please. I -” Seth moaned, canted his hips down to try and get Dean’s finger in him deeper. The hard bulge of Dean’s jeans brushed along the curve of Seth’s ass and Seth made a sound that should have been illegal. “You don’t. Don’t have to. You can just -”  
  
Dean swallowed hard, went still.  
  
Seth was always saying things like that. Telling Dean he didn’t need to get him wet, as if Dean wouldn't want to bother fingering him or making sure he was ready before fucking around. It would've been one thing if Seth had just been into having really rough sex, but he always seemed to like that Dean was gentle with him, called him pretty. It seemed more like the way that Seth never insisted that Dean use a condom even though Seth had literally no idea where he had been. Dean could have spent the last month fucking his way across every farm in North Dakota and picking up all sorts of old timey pioneer diseases, but Seth still wouldn't have said anything about Dean wrapping it up.  
  
It got Dean real hot under the collar at the same time as it pissed him off. What did Seth think he was doing, just trusting Dean like that? Hell, Dean never sucked dick or got fucked without protection, not unless the other guy just wasn’t having it, and -. Dean realized then that he was still a little buzzed and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he felt a mean with it. The knowing that Seth expected nothing of him but would still let Dean do whatever he wanted.  
  
Dean took his hands off of Seth, sat back on his heels and sucked in a deep, shaky breath. He covered his eyes with his clean hand, tried to breathe steady and get his emotions under control. It wasn't one of his most well developed skills. Seth had pulled away from him, and when Dean looked up Seth had his back up against the wall of the cab by the pillows, arms wrapped around his knees where they were pulled up to his chest.  
  
“I'm sorry.” Seth said, and he wasn’t looking at Dean when he talked. “I'm. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. You don't have to do anything, you can just. Sleep back here, and I'll go up front.”  
  
“What.” Dean said. His inflection was all wrong for it to be a question, but maybe that was okay since Dean wasn't even completely sure what he was asking about.  
  
“I'm not. I don't expect anything from you, okay?” Seth sounded like the words physically hurt to say, like he was being ripped apart, but at least now he was looking at Dean when he said them. It was the only way Dean was sure that Seth wasn’t pulling his leg when he continued “I know you hate it. I'm sorry.”  
  
“Fuck you.” Dean said, and all of a sudden it was like he was stuck in a loop, back in Arkansas, and all of this was going to end badly again. Seth looked stricken, guilty, didn't say anything in reply before Dean barged on full steam ahead. “Guess what pretty boy? You ain't special just because you want me to put my hand on your neck when we screw. And you, what, you think that you're, twisting my arm to make me fuck you?”  
  
Seth still didn't reply, which was a good enough as answer for Dean, and Dean felt the fight drain out of him, the urge to shout and throw things receding just as it had been about to boil over. Dean wiped the lube off his hand on Seth’s sheet, not missing the way that Seth’s lip curled. It was the only normal thing in this whole fucked up situation.  
  
“You're not my damn parole officer. You don't get to make my decisions for me.” Dean rolled his eyes, wrapped his hand against Seth’s bare ankle. Dean didn’t know how else to be reassuring, didn't know what else to do except try to keep his voice light as he said “You know I wanna fuck your brains out all the goddamn time. Right?”  
  
Seth blushed, dark red that bloomed across his chest. “Then why -”  
  
“Why what?”  
  
“Well maybe I could tell you if you'd stop fucking cutting me off.” Seth snapped, but he twisted his hands together in counterpoint to his nagging. “Why are you always showing up drunk when I pick you up?”  
  
“Because it's fun? Because it keeps me warm? Because I'm a fucking bum, Seth, mostly so I don't have to give a fuck about how I live my life.”  
  
“Sounds nice.” Seth said, flexing his ankle in Dean’s gentle grip. Dean would have thought that Seth was just shooting his mouth off, mocking Dean, if not for the honesty on his face.  
  
“It's. It has moments.” Dean replied, shrugged his shoulders as he looked away.  
  
It was the only thing Dean could think to say that was true without having too much actual truth in it. Because -  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
“Yeah.” Dean yawned, looked away from Seth and through where the curtain was parted, out the windshield and across the wide expanse of the truck stop parking lot. “I'm fine, just. Tired.”  
  
Because one time Dean had been attacked and beaten so badly that he had woken up in the hospital with a plastic bracelet that said ‘Doe, John. DOB: UNKNOWN’. But there were also the times when he had partied for days in the desert with people he barely knew, invincible and free. Dean traveled more miles each year than some people did in their entire lives. He didn't want to settle down or have responsibilities, fuck that, but he didn't want to be cold and hungry all the time either. There was nothing out there for Dean anymore except for the road, but if the day came that he disappeared no one would ever even notice.  
  
Dean didn’t know how to tell Seth any of that - he barely knew how to even think it inside his own head. He didn't know if he even really wanted to say anything other than that he was just so, so tired

**Author's Note:**

> As always I write and edit everything on my phone, so please let me know if I've made any particularly terrible mistakes. Kudos and comments are loved!
> 
> [tumblr ](http://www.bingitoff.Tumblr.com)


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